Board 8 > If you're buying equipment in an RPG..

(+) Yeah! (+)

...and you don't have enough money for a full set of new equipment, what do you prioritize? Do you buy new weapons first, or armor?

Let's say you're not going to grind for the rest (I assume that would skew towards weapons more). You're going straight into the next dungeon with whatever you can buy. What do you value more?
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Always weapons.
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Weapons, always.
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I think it depends on the game. Some games have enemies hit harder than others, and for those I'll probably focus on armor first.
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For Persona/SMT armor first. For easier RPGs weapons first

My default is weapons, but I alternate between weapon and armor a lot. Another big factor is how ubiquitous the armor is. I feel like there are far more games where weapon is unique to each character but armor is a bit more uniform.
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favorite character's weapon -> favorite character's armor -> weapons for everyone else
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Better armor = less demand on healers = easier game
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Whatever I feel like I need more at the time, but probably what swordz said. And prioritizing the main character in games where you have to use him.
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If the game is good, armor. If the game is bad, weapons.

Gatarix posted...

favorite character's weapon -> favorite character's armor -> weapons for everyone else

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Weapons are always better for fodder, while armor does nothing. So that's one area where better weapons is always a better choice.
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the faster you kill the enemy, the less hits you take, so weapons in general are better

but that's just a rule of thumb. you have to math it out

not being one shot > more damage > more defense

but i tend to foolishly save all of my money for potential endgame secret ludicrous items anyway
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Weapons. Killing things faster is just funner.
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whatevers more cost effective and a bigger upgrade
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Weapons unless the cost/benefit is way unbalanced.
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Depends on what would be the better upgrade
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In most RPGs, ESPECIALLY JRPGs, the benefits from weapons vastly outstrip the benefits from armor. I have no idea why this is, but it just is - the defense stat tends to be given much less weight than the attack stat, and then on top of that, most of the actually dangerous attacks will be magic or something else that's not subject to defense, so it's better to pick up the weapons, which pretty much always scale up helpfully, making it so that you can kill mobs quick and make boss fights shorter so that you need to spend fewer healing items powering through them.

In a game like Darkest Dungeon though, I go armor first, then weapon.

Weapons

Unless I happen to know for certain that an armors Status and/or elemental resistance will make or break a fight

Though really, I usually grind until I get every piece of equipment available in shops
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Max out 99 potions/healing items, then weapons.
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Almost always weapons. Mainly because at most your character is going to have 2 of them. You can have a ton of armor slots and it adds up quickly. In games like say Dark Souls a good weapon will carry you through the game. Like it's reasonably "easy" to beat the game with a +5 Long Sword or whatever and with like no armor at all. It's a lot harder to beat the game with like a non upgraded Long Sword and really good armor.
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It obviously varies by the game.

That said, as someone who actually makes a point to try to understand damage formulas from as many games as possible, the answer is weapons a shockingly large amount of the time. Defence often just isn't a very potent stat mechanically. Furthermore, as already noted, armour often doesn't affect damage dealt by magic, and in some games bosses favour that.

The most egregious example is cases like Final Fantasy 7, where literally the difference between, say, the starting armour and the Crystal Bangle (final storebought armour) is a cut of about 12% physical damage received... so you can imagine how tiny any given upgrade is. (Armour upgrades are notable for materia slots and elemental properties, but not defences.) That's on the low end for worthwhile defensive stats, but not by as much as you might imagine.

Weapons, meanwhile, are almost always a meaningful upgrade, except for characters who don't use them to deal damage. (Granted, in some games, like Final Fantasy 6, that can be a lot of the cast!)
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In FFVII, MDef literally doesn't even exist.
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